


“Harry and Hermione” by Nicholas Hooper (from “The Half Blood Prince”)

by Luca_Crimson



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Canon Compliant, Gen, Master of Death, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-17
Updated: 2016-06-17
Packaged: 2018-07-15 14:48:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,109
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7226815
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Luca_Crimson/pseuds/Luca_Crimson
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The promised one-shot for the first person to spot the Teen Wolf reference in "He came like an oncoming Storm"<br/>This might be a bit depressing but contains no triggers as far as I can see.</p>
            </blockquote>





	“Harry and Hermione” by Nicholas Hooper (from “The Half Blood Prince”)

Hermione was sitting on the stairs to the back door of her home. Her hair had long ago turned grey with age, yet it had lost little of its bushiness. The wind played with the bleached strands. The air was humid, making it hard to breathe.

Behind her in the house she heard the younger members of her family move about in the kitchen. They coped differently with grief than her. She needed to be alone. They needed something to do. Ron was similar in that aspect. She said “was” but it should be “had been”, after all they had held the small private funeral for Ron not four hours ago.

They had buried him in the garden next to the small wishing well, shadowed by the old elder tree. She could see the grave from here, the earth around it still fresh.

But unlike the deaths during the war, she felt not completely crushed. Ronald had died of old age, there was no other way to put it, seeing as even their great-grandchildren’s great-grandchildren had great-grandchildren now. He had lived a full life and greeted death well prepared. Maybe it had helped that he would know that his parents and siblings would wait on the other side for him. Still sadness filled her heart, since she feared it would be quite some time until she saw him again.

She felt something silky and otherworldly brush her hand. From the point next to her came a familiar warmth. “I know you’re there Harry.” She turned around and there he was.

The Invisibility cloak was draped over his shoulders silvery and ethereal as it had been when he first laid eyes on it when he was eleven years old. Underneath Harry wore simple black robes. The Stone of Resurrection hung from a thin silver chain around his neck. She could see the Elder Wand in a holster on his side.

Although more than a hundred years had passed, Harry still looked no older than seventeen. Hermione still remembered how the horrible realization had come upon them all. At first Harry stopped aging after the war. It was hardly noticeable since the stress of their Horcrux Hunt had let him seemingly age faster. Then they blamed Harry’s youthfulness on good genes. But when Luna had come home from her traveling years and pointed out how Harry still looked like he was in his late teens although he was nearing fifty, they could no longer ignore it. They went to the best healers the world had to offer, to no avail. And then another shock hit them: Harry could not die. He was hit with a Killing Curse directly to the chest, only to stand up not a minute later. On another occasion, he was run over by a train during a mission in the muggle world.

It was Hermione who helped Harry through that phase. They had looked up every possible hint and finally linked it back to the Deathly Hallows. It took Harry years to collect them again and when they finally had reunited the three artefacts they were well over 90 years old. Ginny was suffering from Dragonpox. Harry stayed with her day and night, not once leaving her side. Not a year later Ginny succumbed to the illness and Harry turned the newly repaired Elder Wand on himself, expecting to die.

But nothing happened.

So they started researching again.

And finally their search brought them back to what had started everything.

The prophecy.

It made sense when you thought about it. “One must die at the hand of the other”. In other words, they could only die by each other’s hands and as Harry had vanquished Voldemort, there was no one left who could have killed him. When Harry saved the wizarding world he had made to ultimate sacrifice. Not his life, because giving one’s life for one’s friends and family was not such a bad sacrifice, but giving up one’s own death was the biggest possible sacrifice for someone like Harry.

So he left. Dropped off the face of the earth and everyone around them thought that grief had killed him. Only Hermione knew the truth.

He had left her a letter, telling that he would go to Hogwarts to teach the ones clever enough to find him what he knew of Death’s mysteries. Because Harry knew a lot. Every time he died he came back with more knowledge of things that better ought to be never explained.

They kept steady contact during the years. He always telling her about the new secrets of the castle he found and she told him about the outside world. He told her where to look for materials that could support her campaign on the equality of all magical races (it had started with house elves and werewolves but had become so much more) and she told him about how his family was doing. She did not know where in Hogwarts Harry hid but she suspected he used the Chamber of Secrets, the Room of Requirement was more of an open secret in Hogwarts, since the descendants of Dumbledore’s Army had come to the school. But no one ever found him, because the Chamber's location was something Ginny and Ron took to the grave.

Slowly during the decades, she watched on as “Harry Potter” fell into legend and became nothing more than a myth parents told their children. The Potter line had long since vanished. Ron had found the process hilarious.

Ron…

She turned to Harry: “Will I die soon?”

“Death’s path is unclear even to me who they call his Master.”

“I’ll take that as a “probably”…Why are you here?”

“I came too late to bid farewell to Ron but I wanted to say good bye to you.”

“So you will stay here until I leave this world?”

“Yes. Though I must admit that I hope to speak to Death so that he may grant me entrance to the afterlife as well.”

“You know…Ron never believed that you were dead. He said you were too strong to die of grief…”

“He is probably on the other side, raging at someone about how evil I was to not tell him.”

“Yes. But he’ll come around. He always does…”

“That he does…”

So they both kept sitting on the stairs to the back door of Hermione’s home, waiting for Death. Some times talking, other times silently enjoying each other’s company.

And when Death came they both greeted him like an old friend, going with him, leaving merely a pebble, an old elder twig and a silvery piece of cloth.

END


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